Jewish Terrorist's Son: Release My Father, Too

Son of Ami Popper, who killed 7 Arab workers in 1990, says his father should go free along with Arab terrorists.

By Gil Ronen

First Publish: 3/26/2014, 10:00 PM

Avraham Yitzhak Popper

Hezki Ezra

A young Jewish man whose father is in jail for murdering seven Arab men in 1990 doesn't understand why his father can't go free alongside the Arab terrorists being released as a "gesture" to the Palestinian Authority.

Avraham Yitzhak Popper's father, Ami Popper, shot dead seven Arabs from Gaza and injured 11 others when they waited for work at his home town of Rishon Letzion. He was sentenced to seven consecutive life sentences and an additional 20 years. In the course of his trial, he claimed that he had been raped by an Arab man when he was 13, and that the murders were his form of revenge.

Avraham attended a Knesset debate Wednesday on the planned upcoming release of terrorists as a "gesture" to the Palestinian Authority. "I don't understand the absurdity of releasing terrorists and not releasing Jews who have regretted their actions and served in jail for many years," the distraught Popper told Arutz Sheva.

"It isn't fair, it's not equal," he remonstrated, "that they release Arabs with blood on their hands, and he – who has been locked up for many, many years, and he has expressed remorse for what he did…"

Popper also noted that releasing his father would pose far less of a security threat than releasing Palestinian terrorists.

"Arabs go back to terror but Jews never went back to terror [after being released]. Never. Yet they never release Jews," he declared.

The young Popper was accompanied to the Knesset by Ofra Bar Sheshet, his father's sister.

"The Israeli government has released thousands of terrorists, including ones with blood on their hands," she said, "and they have all kinds of excuses – about having committed their crimes before the Oslo Accords were signed, et cetera. And my brother is in jail for 24 years, since before the Oslo Accords – he has the right to go free, just like them."

"The holiday of freedom [Passover] is upon us and this is the time to release them – not one day later," Bar Sheshet stated.